oye! oye!

February 06, 2008

It's all in the (invisible) pen: tales from a Chicago precinct

I have long been an advocate of optical-scan ballots. They've got a good track record and hold up well in both the transparency and mechanical function categories. However, yesterday was actually my first time voting on an optical scan ballot. The most notable part of the experience was the fancy, expensive-looking pen they gave me to vote with. I am kicking myself that I didn't get a picture, but found this close cousin online. It's what I would call an "artist's pen," at least that's what Faber-Castell names the pen pictured here. I venture that on the open market they cost at least a $1.50 a piece. I presume that the Chicago Board of Elections gets a deal on them.

The ballot is filled in by connecting the gaps in a black bar to the right of the candidate of your choice. Then you take your ballot to the counter, where you feed it in and make sure that it works. I almost walked off with my fancy pen, but realized on my way out the door and backtracked to return it. The election judges were most grateful for my honesty. I have to imagine they lost quite a few pens over the course of the day, either by accident or theft.

So I was starting to wonder how important it was to vote with this particular type of expensive pen, when I came across the following incredible tale of one voter's crazy adventures in election-pen land. This Chicago voter's fancy pen didn't work and she and others were told by the election judge that it was actually an INVISIBLE PEN and that the machine would be able to read it. The Tribune had this report:

Apparently, said city election board spokesman James Allen, the poll workers told incredulous voters—including one spouse of an election judge—that the stylus used for touch-screen voting was actually an inkless pen to fill out paper ballots.

"You spend months trying to prepare for every contingency," Allen said. "Trying to anticipate every possible way people might be confused . . . then this? Incredible."

Even the ballot scanning machine knew better, he said, rejecting all 20 ballots as blank.

"Each time, the judges overrode the scanner and recorded the vote," he said.

By 3 p.m., only five of the 20 voters had been contacted to return to recast their votes.

This incident demonstrates a more fundamental problem facing proponents of electronic voting, one that no engineer or computer science wiz can solve: poorly trained polling officials.

And as with many problems at the polls, the devil is in the details and one is never certain of the exact combination of incompetence and malintent at play in any given situation. Here, I cannot resist the shamless plug for Election Day, the documentary I produced about a dozen voters and pollworkers around the country on November 2, 2004. Our footage highlighted the human element in the voting process, which can do much good (passionate individuals whose committed actions make our democracy tick) and much harm (ala invisible pen, mischievous political machinery, overwhelmed bureaucracies, etc.).

At the end of the day, at least one voter at said precinct voted successfully with a ballpoint pen, begging the question of whether or not the fancy felt-tips were necessary and whether the money might have been better spent on an extra hour of pollworker training. I'll leave you with this picture of me, happy as a clam to be casting my vote, with my very fancy pen.